Ultra Lozère Trail

The Ultra Lozère Trail is a 110-kilometer race with 5,600 meters of elevation gain that crosses the Lozère, France's least populated department, a territory of grandiose solitudes where nature reigns as absolute master. Starting from Chanac, a small town in the Lot valley nestled between the causses and the gorges, runners embark on a monumental traverse of Lozère's four iconic landscapes: the vast limestone causses, the deep gorges of the Tarn and Jonte rivers, the granite massif of Mont Lozère, and the dark forests of the Margeride.

Lozère is a land of striking geological contrasts, shaped by the meeting of the granite Massif Central and the limestone plateaus of the Grands Causses. The Ultra Lozère Trail course exploits this diversity with remarkable topographic mastery. Runners first cross the immensities of the Causse de Sauveterre, a near-desert karst plateau dotted with dolines, lavognes (natural water holes), and cazelles — the dry-stone huts that once sheltered shepherds. Then the trail plunges abruptly into the Tarn gorges, a vertiginous canyon with golden limestone cliffs rising 500 meters, before climbing back up the wooded slopes of Mont Lozère.

Mont Lozère, the course's high point at 1,699 meters at the summit of the Pic de Finiels, is a granite massif of rounded forms covered with peat bogs, high-altitude meadows, and granite boulder fields that evoke the landscapes of the Scottish Highlands. It is a transhumance territory where sheep flocks still ascend each summer to the "montagnettes," accompanied by shepherds carrying on agropastoral traditions inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. The draille paths — broad transhumance routes bordered by stone walls — are the guiding thread of the course through this section.

Lozère's wildlife is exceptionally rich, the fruit of decades of reintroduction and protection policies. Griffon vultures and black vultures soar above the Tarn and Jonte gorges, successfully reintroduced since the 1970s. Wolves, having returned naturally from Italy, roam the forests of Mont Lozère. Beavers populate the banks of the Tarn, and red deer bugle in the Margeride forests in autumn. Night runners sometimes have the fortune of spotting the genet, a small Mediterranean carnivore, or the Eurasian eagle-owl in the gorge cliffs.

For international runners, the Ultra Lozère Trail is a deep dive into a wild and remote France, a territory where population density falls below 15 inhabitants per square kilometer and where the night sky, free of light pollution, unfurls the Milky Way in all its splendor. Chanac is accessible from Mende (15 minutes), itself connected to Paris by train via Clermont-Ferrand or Nîmes. Lozérien gastronomy — aligot, fouace bread, pélardon goat cheese, Lozère lamb — is a reward commensurate with the effort. This is an ultra for lovers of solitude and wide-open spaces, a race where one can run for hours without encountering another soul, accompanied only by the song of skylarks and the breath of wind across the causses.